What do you want from a personal information manager (PIM)? You might like it to keep track of appointments, manage a to-do list, or keep your contact names, addresses, and phone numbers handy. Maybe you need a database of inventory items, a spreadsheet of expenses, or a tool to help you stay up to date on the latest financial news. And what about keeping track of your e-mail and newsgroup messages? That may seem like a lot for one program to do, but Info Select 7.0 ($149.95 direct) can do all that and more, despite a few limitations.

Info Select bears less resemblance to programs that are structured, like Microsoft Outlook, than it does to a Rorschach inkblotit can be more or less whatever you want it to be. Think of an empty desk in a new office. You get to choose what you will place in the various drawers and how you will organize them. Some people have trouble with this much freedom because they don't know the most sensible places to put things; others see the opportunity to customize their workspaces, and some even create systems of folders and dividers to categorize their information. Info Select is like the empty deskit does not impose any organizational structure on your information storage. It does provide a range of tools that you can use for organizing, though.

The Info Select workspace, called the Selector, can contain a variety of different data types. There are databases, calendars, and Web addresses, and there are grids that can function as spreadsheets. You also have access to free-form text notes and even to images. Info Select comes with an assortment of sample templates and formatted reports to get you started, but you'll likely end up creating a lot of your own structures to meet your particular needs. You can import all types of data, including your Web favorites and existing e-mail folders, which can help get you started. You can also select data in other Windows applications and paste that information into Info Select automatically, using an icon in the Windows tool tray.

You might think that all this freedom could lead to chaos, but Info Select's search function lets you find individual entries of any sort with a keyword search. As you enter a keyword, parts of a graphic representation of the total contents change color so that only blocks representing the hits are colored. If you have too many hits, you can add to the query to narrow it further. This makes it easy to know when you've chosen a search term that is too broad or too narrow. As a result, finding a needle of information in a haystack of items is quick and easy.

Despite the product's relaxed structure and easy searches, the Info Select learning curve is fairly steep. The software has menus and toolbars, but you'll have to master a few of the keyboard shortcuts to enter data efficiently. And some features are idiosyncratic. For example, you can sort by columns in a standard grid, but not in a Selector grid. And when you can sort a grid or database, you can do so only one column or field at a time, which is a serious limitation. There's only on-disc documentation, so you have to spend a lot of time poking through help files to find out how to make the most of the program.

Info Select is not for everyone, but if you're willing to invest the time to get to know it, you can turn it into a program that will get your mail, organize your work, track your files, and do just about everything but pour the coffee.

A Program You Can Live In

A Program You Can Live In

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